


live where soul meets body

by zenithaurora



Series: Aang Week [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang Week 2021, Avatar Cycle, Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenithaurora/pseuds/zenithaurora
Summary: Sometimes he is all of them at once and sometimes he is none.Or a reflection in the way that the Avatar Cycle works.
Series: Aang Week [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174718
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	live where soul meets body

**Author's Note:**

> i had no inspiration whatsoever for this prompt.

He is not sure how many times he has lived before; he is only certain that it is a privilege and a curse reserved only to the Avatar. He gets glimpses of his past lives in the glimmers of the first sun rays in the early mornings, in the twitches of his fingers that reach out with longing for a faded memory, in the shadows of phantoms that have forsaken the mortal world centuries ago but are still breathing within him. Most of the times, memories that do not belong to him come in flashes, an unbreakable bond that forces all of them to share the core of their being. They were always going to be linked together, to inhabit the same spirit. They share a connection, a reminder that they are never alone, for better and for worse. At times, it runs so deep he could swear he was them.

*

Sometimes he is Yangchen.

She is born an Air Nomad and raised in the upside-down buildings of the Western Air Temple. It is only one weeks after finalizing her Avatar training that she is entrusted with the task of quelling a threat emerging from the depths of the sea to save a small coastal city. After spending an entire night fighting Old Iron, they reach an agreement of preserving the land free of humans for the rest of eternity.

She spends the rest of her life as an Avatar completely devoted to her duty of keeping the world safe, even at the cost of the values that she was raised with. Despite understanding and respecting the teachings that her culture had to offer, she never hesitates to push pacificism aside for the sake of the world. She holds tight to the belief that the goal of protecting the world as well as the humans living in it justified her actions, to the point that she is willing to make deals with criminals if it means preventing bloodshed and the loss of human lives.

She reinforces in herself these views, knowing that, as the Avatar, she could never truly be an Air Nomad. She could never separate herself from the physical realm and achieve enlightenment, because as the Avatar, she would always possess an attachment to the world.

She is not an ordinary human being; thus, she cannot behave like one. She never shows fear in the face of danger, and she never shows grief when forced to deal with loss. There is no place for weakness when the balance of the world lays on her hands, and she cannot show the cracks in her façade when confronted with her imperfections and fallacies. Her feelings and her beliefs will always come second to the wellbeing of the world.

She spends her last days in her homebirth, away from the bustle and dissonance of an ever-changing world. She lays on her old bed, her weary, wasted bones weighting down in the mattress, pondering on the lack of threats of war that could break the fragile peace she has managed to implant during her time.

However, her resolution that she has maintained a peaceful world crumbles with every new conflict his current reincarnation has to deal with due to the ramification of her actions. She wishes she had realized in life the effects that favoring humans over spirits would have. As she is worshipped as holy figure in the Earth Kingdom and among the Air Nomads, she does not feel deserving of such reverence and adoration.

*

Sometimes he is Kuruk.

He is born in the Northern Water Tribe, and his identity as the Avatar is uncovered when the sages of his tribe give him a glowing crystal, and manages to bend it, a dumbfounded expression settling on his face.

He is a young and vigorous man filled with power and eagerness to be the Avatar. He dreams of changing the mortal world for the better, uniting the people from the four nations while taking in consideration and respecting the foundations laid by his previous reincarnation. He tries to conjure a picture of what his legacy would like; a world rejoiced in peace and united.

However, his hopes are smashed to the ground with his first encounter against a furious Heartwalker. It takes a powerful demonstration of bending all the elements to defeat the dark spirit. His companions manage to find him somehow, crawling on the grassy field of Yaoping, and he is quick to assure them and calm their concerns.

Ever since that day, his body begins to feel off. His strength, although still considerable, dwindles, and the stamina product of his youth diminishes with the passing of time. He does not know what it is wrong with him, until he remembers the fight against the spirit.

He does not know how, but the confrontation against the dark spirit had seeped through his veins, tainting his soul, and corrupting his spirit to its core. He confides in his mentor, Nyahitha, desperately searching for a cure for the spiritual illness, but there is no fix to the actions of a vindictive spirit. 

The rest of his short life is spent fighting against these dark spirits, trying to undo the damage caused by his predecessor, even at the cost of the shortening of his lifespan. With the pass of time, the corruption begins poisoning every cleft and underside of the insides of his body. He drinks, every morning and every night, despite the looks he would get from his friends and strangers alike. Nowadays, his body can only find release in the numbness that copious amounts alcohol can offer.

As the fights against the dark spirits take its toll on his body, he begins trying to do anything in his power to feel like a human, rather than an empty vessel for an uncurable spiritual illness. Long, sleepless nights are spent carousing, drinking among men around his age, men whose eyes were not ridden by the baggage of combating the dark spirits every waking moment.

One day, at the New Moon Celebration, he meets a young woman from the Southern Water Tribe named Ummi. For once, he forgets about the affliction slowly killing him, and he forsakes all worries and regrets to stay in the depth of her light-blue eyes boring into him. He has never considered himself the type of person who could commit to someone, but Ummi makes him want to try to become a better and more responsible person, a man worthy of being loved by a woman like her.

Tragedy strikes nearing their wedding date, when she is pulled into the oasis and dragged to the Spirit by Koh the Face Stealer as a punishment for his ineptitude. Every year, until the day he dies, he travels to the Spirit World, fighting his way through in search of Ummi but with no avail. Even after his death, he promises to the wind that he would find her someday, and would grant her the peace and freedom she deserves.

He watches the world succumb in chaos, with uprisings and large-scale banditry destabilizing the Earth Kingdom and pirate fleets growing in numbers, terrorizing the coastal villages. As he hopes for his reincarnation to reveal themselves and fix his mistakes, he decides that being the Avatar it is a curse he would never wish upon anyone.

*

Sometimes he is Kyoshi.

She is a kid born from criminals, a forgotten child left to rot in the streets, forced to survive without anything but her will to live and her distinguishable strength. She spends most of her formative years eating out of the garbage, being taken to the limits of her survival abilities every day, and being outcasted by her whole community.

Two men arrive her community one day. Jianzhu and Kelsang, the previous’ Avatar companions, are conducting a test for the kids of her community to find the new reincarnation. She stays by the sidelines at first, curiosity growing at the sight of dozens of small artifacts spread on cloth over the table. She is invited to participate, and with some hesitation and after being convinced, she picks one of the toys, a small clay turtle. When the two men try to coax her into picking three more toys, she flees, not trusting their intentions. She grasps on the little artifact until her clammy hands warm it up.

Kelsang, the bald man with a shaggy dark beard that reaches his chest, takes pity on her, and offers a place to stay, a roof over her head and a belly filled with food. Although she is hesitant to trust the man first, she accepts reluctantly, concluding that the advantages of the arrangement would outweigh the possible downsides.

She is overwhelmed by the selfless kindness in the man’s eyes, and she is invited to take a permanent residence in the Avatar mansion as a servant for the new Avatar, a man named Yun. During her work, she meets Yun’s bodyguard, a young female firebender named Rangi with a peculiar way to express her emotions towards people. After a few weeks, Kyoshi determines she likes her.

Life it is simple and uncomplicated, knowing that she always has a warm dinner and an even warmer bed waiting for her at the end of the day. It is everything she ever wanted, and she is content.

Then everything becomes complicated when Kelsang shares his suspicions that she may be the Avatar. She dismisses this theory, baffled with the ridiculousness of the idea that someone like her, an orphan, an outsider, could be the one to carry that type of responsibility on her shoulders. She cannot deny those claims, however, when, to save Yun, she uses a combination of raw power and the Avatar State to destroy a fleet that belonged to the Fifth Nation. Meeting Father Glowworm only confirms her status.

She escapes far away from that town with Rangi and joins a ship commanded by a group of criminals that become their teachers, as well as her close confidants and friends; she finally feels like she has a place and people to call home.

The losses and deaths around her shapes her into the Avatar she becomes. She often fears her unaltered power, and the consequences that yielding such power can have. However, she is determined to bring an end to the political conflicts that are constantly rising in the Earth Kingdom. She adheres to a neutral jin; she does not strike back until it is necessary, but when she does, she has no qualms about killing her enemies if that is what it takes. Only true justice can bring peace, and she is willing to do anything to establish and maintain that said peace.

She spends more than two hundred years in her position as the Avatar, working relentlessly to fix the mistakes that were committed before her birth. After her death, people venerate her and consider her one of the greatest Avatars known to history, but as she is described as legend, she feels like an ordinary woman.

*

Sometimes he is Roku.

He is a lanky, awkward teenager, whose face freezes in shock when he is told he is the Avatar. It does not make sense in his head how someone so ordinary and unremarkable as him could hold the power of countless of reincarnations before him. Without a choice, he accepts the role, feeling honored at the great responsibility that balances on his shoulders, carrying the mantle of the people that came before him.

That same day, and in the confinements of his bedchambers, his best friend, Sozin, approaches him, wishing upon him good fortune, and gifting him a two-flame headpiece. _‘So you will never forget where you come from’_ he says, and Roku embraces him, unaware of what the future holds for the two of them.

Trepidation settles on him during the long journey to the Southern Air Temple, where he would begin his training as the Avatar. The nervousness that had conquered his days aboard the ship swiftly dissipates with every moment spent among the monks, who do not live up to their reputation of being solemn and prude. He even befriends a monk around his age named Gyatso who teaches him how to air-surf. When the time to leave arrives, a new sense of excitement takes over his body, eager to learn and know more. Learning how to bend water it is more difficult and takes him longer than he wishes, but eventually, he masters it too. After his struggling days spent in the Northern Water Tribe, mastering earthbending feels almost too easy.

After mastering the Avatar State (and accidentally destroying the upper half of the Fire Temple on Crescent Island), he returns home a changed person. Long were gone the days in which he was a scrawny and tall teenager with twiggy limbs; now he was a man with filled shoulders and shaped muscles, with an arsenal of knowledge from his past lives at his disposal.

The first person he sees after spending so many years away from home is Sozin. The physical changes and the new responsibilities on them are noticeable at first sight, but it only takes them one look at each other to feel like the kids they were when they first met. He is a fully realized Avatar and Sozin is the new Fire Lord, but they would always be Roku and Sozin.

One day, things begin to change. It is supposed to be one of best days of life, marrying the woman he had always loved, when he concludes Sozin _had_ changed in the years they spent apart, and for worse. Delusions of expansion and disquieting sayings of national superiority reaches his ears. Roku advises him to never bring that subject up again, and he wills for this to be the end to his misbeliefs. When Sozin plants settlements in the Earth Kingdom, rage ignites his bones. He readies himself to kill him, to do whatever it takes for the sake of the world, but his eyes remind him of the times when their friendship was still uncomplicated and he pardons his life. He turns to walk away but his back remains tense.

He wonders, as the corners of his eyes darkens and his lungs constricts and dries with the toil of breathing through the fumes, if he was too merciful, too naïve. His breathes comes uneven and his sight is grey, but his imminent death takes a backseat in his mind as he hopes that he did not make a mistake.

*

Sometimes Aang is neither of them, and his chest aches with the empty sensation that settles in him, feeling incomplete without them. In a way, he is not whole without all the versions of his spirit that came before him. For almost ten thousand years, the Avatar Spirit had reincarnated, repeatedly, to protect humanity and the Spirit World. The Avatars were different among each other, but they all shared the objective of improving the world, of searching to establish a peace and end conflicts.

As long as there is kindness in the hearts of the desolated, and compassion in the words of the wearied, and mercy in the actions of the enraged, the Avatar has a reason to fight for. As long as there is suffering and grief, the Avatar has a purpose and a duty to fulfill.

Aang lays on his bed, with limbs that are too heavy to do anything but to agonize with the weariness of the years lived. He knows that the time for him is coming, sooner that he would have expected. He has seen weeping and heard curses, he has felt tears dampening his bedsheets and sensed the tense silence lingering in the air.

He is not scared; this is part of a cycle that it is bigger than him or anyone. He wants to tell them he is not going anywhere, that he is only going to come back changed and new to the world, but he keeps those words for himself.

He closes his eyes, trying to imagine his next reincarnation, the person they would be, the challenges they would have to face, and the mistakes they would have to correct. He smiles and takes one last breath, eager to meet them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title based on 'Soul Meets Body' by Death Cab for Cutie.


End file.
